TEENAGERS as young as 14 are becoming rent boys in a desperate bid to feed a growing drug habit.

TEENAGERS as young as 14 are becoming rent boys in a desperate bid to feed a growing drug habit.

The scale of the problem in the city's Jewellery Quarter is alarming due to the numbers and age of the boys, says Bill Gavin, founder of the city's Gay Pride Festival, who also owns the Subway City nightclub, in Livery Street.

"More than 90 per cent of these boys are heterosexual, they are simply doing it to pay back drug dealers," said Mr Gavin at a meeting of the St Paul's Square Business Liaison Partnership.

"This problem has been going on discreetly in the area for the past two decades but now some of these youngsters are flagging down cars and the public are horrified.

"These are desperate kids taking desperate measures."

He added that even though the Jewellery Quarter now had affluent apartments, the area

The Partnership is concerned at the rise in violent crime, particularly since the murder of 23-year-old surveyor Paul Tanner in March when he was stabbed as he walked across St Paul's Churchyard.

Insp Sean Russell, of Vyse Street police, said: "This has been highlighted by the community and we are treating it as a major issue."

Andy Munro, operations director of the Jewellery Quarter Regeneration Partnership, said the first stage of £58,0000 worth of brighter lighting would be installed later this year and finished by March.

He hoped that a £100,000 project to install four CCTV cameras at strategic points in the Jewellery Quarter, would be started early in the new year.